Crazy for You
Chapter 1: Nightmares on Privet Drive
Harry Potter was back at the Dursley's again like he promised he would. He really did not want to go back but he had to, for Dumbledore at least. He owed him that much.
The summer had started like it normally did at the Dursley's. Harry was ignored and the Dursley's stayed as far away from him as possible. Since the Dursley's acted like he was diseased anyway (Harry wouldn't have been the least surprised if they wore rubber gloves any time they were in the same room as him), Harry was free to pretty much do whatever he wanted, whenever he wanted to.
Harry hated being around the Dursley's; they looked at him differently. They knew about Dumbledore, they had heard Harry screaming in his sleep ever since he came back from Hogwarts. Harry knew they did. They often looked down when they saw him, even Uncle Vernon and Dudley did (and they liked confrontation). They just shook their heads and whispered about him, loudly too. One thing about the Dursley's, they were not quiet people.
Harry heard them. "What's wrong with him?" they asked, glancing over their shoulders at Harry, who stood in the doorway where he was just visible. "He's acting stranger than normal, not that I thought his lot could get any stranger," Uncle Vernon remarked.
"I heard him screaming in his sleep, "Dum…Dummydore" I think was the name he was screaming," Dudley replied scratching his head, trying to obviously remember the correct name.
"Petunia, I think he means the weirdo that visited us last year, that bloke who said we didn't know how to treat people and was wearing those damn robes and cap. I wonder what happened? Maybe he died," Vernon said coolly as if Dumbledore dying was the most natural think in the world.
"Looked like he was about to anyway," Dudley mumbled between bites of oatmeal. This made Harry furious. Them talking about Dumbledore like that. They did not know him. What right did they have? Did they see something about Dumbledore that Harry did not? They often looked these days as if they were in a football huddle planning the best way to make minimal contact with Harry. Unfortunately, one of their tactics were talking about him as if he was not in the room when he was. They did not know the torture Harry was going through each night.
Many nights Harry would wake up to the sound of his own voice screaming in his dreams. These dreams were more nightmares though.
In the nightmares, Harry would relive the night Dumbledore died but in horrific ways. Everything was worse. When Harry saw Dumbledore fall off the tower, he would look at Snape, but in the nightmare, instead of seeing Snape's face leering with pride, he would see Voldemort's face smiling and laughing a high cold laugh, a laugh Harry had heard many times before, but not as loud or as cruel as it was in his nightmares.
Also someone else was killed. Someone Harry couldn't imagine not having in his life. This someone was Hermione.
In the nightmare, after murdering Dumbledore, Snape would turn on Hermione and say the vilest words anyone could say to Hermione, Snape would say these words because he knew they hurt Hermione the most and relished in other's pain. He would say cruelly, " Now you'll get what you deserve, you filthy Mudblood. It's been coming since the moment you stepped foot into my class and now you'll pay for every answer you gave, you stupid girl!" And with a casual flick of his wand, Snape gave Hermione a murderous smile, a smile that resulted with his wand and the omittance of a blinding flash of emerald green light.
Harry heard Hermione screaming his name. Harry would try to save Hermione, doing anything to stop her pain, using any spell he knew but it was not any good.
As she lay dead, he was kneeling over her, praying she wasn't dead, blaming himself for not saving her if she was, his heart racing, much like it did in the Room of Requirement when Hermione was hit by a Death Eater's spell. Harry would stoke her face, looking into her closed eyes, expecting to see her brown eyes flutter open at the touch of his hand on her face. But she just lay there, motionless.
The dream would end with him punching the ground and laying his head on Hermione's body, still trying to wake her up.
This part of his nightmare came after the part with Dumbledore, which would leave his scar burning. This part, however, would leave Harry with his heart racing and in a cold sweat. He felt the sudden urge to call or write Hermione and make sure she was okay and alive; Harry knew the sound of her voice would relieve him greatly.
But Harry didn't want Hermione to worry about him right now and be scared for him. He just wanted to see her and have her tell him everything would be okay.
These nightmares were worse than the ones Harry had of Cedric's death two years before. These nightmares seemed real; it was as if they were, but Harry knew they weren't because if they were Harry would wake up on top of the tower with Hermione, dead next to him, not in his room on Privet Drive where nightmares weren't reality but reality was a nightmare.